The Blog

Paid Advertising on Social Media

Social media has long been a platform for free or virtually free advertising but it’s changing and paying for advertising on social media sites is becoming essential for businesses. As more companies seek to advertise on social media, advertising space is becoming more competitive making it necessary for social media sites to sell rights to advertise on certain pages.

While hosting your own page for free and depending on the likes and shares of customers is still viable, these shares are only effective for a short time. In the beginning it was often enough to have friends, family, and customers share your page and offer help in the form of free advertising. There are however only so many times that something can be shared by one person and only so many people are going to see your content that they have shared.

Paying for advertising allows a business to reach specific demographics rather than only reaching people who have liked your page. Paid advertising gives a business the ability to target distinct groups, sub sets, and buyers. Advertising on social media allows a more focused campaign with an exact audience to receive it.

A business can target and focus the reach with paid advertising rather than depending on organic reach alone. Facebook for example allows those that are paying for advertising to target different groups, age, gender, and location. A business can guarantee that specific viewers are seeing your content. Though organic networking and organic shares are still useful, having the ability to target specific groups can secure new people will see your content.

Another benefit to paying for social media advertising is that you get a certain amount of automation with your advertising. The platform will guarantee the advertised content remains at the top of searches and continues to get shared. You essentially have the ability to have advertising take care of itself so your business can focus on other endeavors within your company.

Though paying for social media advertising is completely optional and there are still ways that free marketing can be beneficial, it is becoming necessary to pay for social media advertising to help further your business.